JOS Chapter 144

Mountain God

 

Jiang Feng said, “Let’s search some more.”

 

The group walked around the temple.

 

The place was extremely crude, almost visible at a glance, with nothing particularly noteworthy.

 

Their gazes all subconsciously avoided the statue above.

 

Improper things should not be looked at…

 

Jiang Feng pushed open the door on the right side leading to the depths. Behind the door was a small open-air courtyard that had been neglected for a long time and was already overgrown with weeds.

 

“What is this?” the junior brother said. “Is it a stone tablet explaining the Buddha statue?”

 

This was their first time seeing a stone tablet that should have been erected in front of a Buddhist temple buried in the backyard soil. But judging from the bottom of the stone tablet, it had been cut and broken by someone, and now only a corner was exposed.

 

Everyone worked together to pull the thing out and lay it flat on the ground. This stone was very heavy and large, ugly like a tombstone.

 

The junior brother brushed away the mud on the tablet with his hands and wiped the middle clean.

 

Huang Yu thought it would say “Joyful Buddha,” but it didn’t. What was written first was “Evil-Eliminating Buddha.”

 

Everyone looked confused.

 

A man-made Buddha? Would the Joyful Buddha agree to this?

 

Jiang Feng got up and returned to the main hall, and the others quickly followed.

 

“Looking carefully, it really doesn’t seem to be a Joyful Buddha?” the junior brother said, stroking his chin. “What is this thing?”

 

Previously, because they were too embarrassed to look closely, they hadn’t noticed. The male Buddha in a Joyful Buddha should have a more fierce appearance, but this one… had large breasts and was slightly lewd.

 

They had previously thought these were a woman’s breasts, but they weren’t. From the fitting parts, one could barely make out that the male figure also had breasts.

 

Everyone was quite shocked by this image for a moment.

 

Jiang Feng unceremoniously lifted his foot and kicked it, and the Buddha statue immediately collapsed.

 

“There’s no internal mechanism, this is a fake Buddha.”

 

“What kind of ridiculous operation is this?”

 

“Who knows…”

 

The group returned to the backyard to read the stone tablet.

 

The characters on the stone tablet were carved quite beautifully, but the content was not commendable, belonging to the type of bizarre hybrid between vernacular and classical Chinese.

 

It said that the “Evil-Eliminating Buddha” was a very spiritual but not very famous Buddha in Buddhism, because its believers were usually very low-key, not establishing Buddhist temples everywhere or promoting externally to attract believers. Those with affinity would come, those without would disperse – nothing should be forced, and nothing could be forcibly retained. The Buddha statue of this school represented exactly this meaning.

 

This strangely familiar doctrine made the several Taoist priests squint their eyes and dare not speak.

 

It went on to say that the “Evil-Eliminating Buddha” represented the free and unrestrained nature of relationships between the sexes, combined with casual life choices and transcendent ideological content, and could deliver salvation to prematurely deceased fetuses or infants. It specifically added that even wrongfully dead female infants could be saved.

 

Everyone had only one thought in their minds.

 

Nonsense, damn it!

 

Jiang Feng said, “It feels more like a Buddha custom-made for some specific purpose, but plagiarized the form of the Joyful Buddha.”

 

Huang Yu was indignant. “Really shameless! Even plagiarizing Buddha statues!”

 

“Was it to eliminate the malevolent energy of female infants?” Chu Xuanliang murmured. “Did many female infants die in this place before?”

 

Junior brother: “That’s not the point, is it? This is a large-scale fraud scene… oh, how should I put it?”

 

Huang Yu said speechlessly. “Fraud and cult.”

 

Junior brother: “Good thing it’s already abandoned now.”

 

Huang Yu: “But who originally proposed building this temple? Their heart was really black!”

 

The little Mountain God gripped the edges of the stone statue with both hands, straining to lift it up.

 

Huang Yu: “Little guy, what are you trying to do?”

 

Little Mountain God: “What’s on the back?”

 

Huang Yu said suspiciously. “There’s nothing on the back, is there?”

 

Jiang Feng helped turn the Buddha statue over.

 

There was indeed more on the back, but the writing was quite faint, and the handwriting was different. It didn’t look like it was carved with a carving knife.

 

Above were recorded events.

 

From the style of the writing, Jiang Feng immediately recognized the author—the Mountain God.

 

****

 

The origin of the incident, when seriously traced back, was no longer verifiable.

 

At that time, Liu Village was a closed-off rural village. There were other villages and small towns nearby, but Liu Village was particularly poor.

 

Rural areas had no contraceptive measures, and there was no recreational entertainment, so families had relatively many children.

 

Six or seven was common, eight or nine also existed.

 

But life was impoverished, children at that time ate a lot, and with the various impacts of war and the difficulties of the early nation-building period, the children born couldn’t be raised at all. Abandoning them wouldn’t find anyone willing to adopt, so to give them a quick end, they would choose to kill them.

 

Whether male or female, both were killed, but more female infants were killed, while boys would be kept as much as possible.

 

This behavior had become customary and was not considered wrong locally.

 

No one knew when it started, but male children born in the village, when they reached their teens, gradually developed breasts, while their Adam’s apples and facial hair were slow to develop, and their voices also changed in a more feminine direction.

 

If not for still having male organs, they really didn’t look much different from girls. However, the biggest problem was that their male needs and abilities were also inferior to normal men.

 

The first household to show these symptoms was isolated by the villagers as having a strange disease.

 

Soon after, a second and third appeared…

 

Initially, families with symptoms would choose to hide it out of fear of affecting normal life, only exposing it when they needed to marry in their twenties.

 

Once exposed, they discovered there were quite a few such people. And after these five or six years, there were even more cases like this among the new batch of boys.

 

The people of Liu Village began to panic.

 

They weren’t sure if this was an epidemic or due to some special reason. Anyway, it was unheard of, and they had no idea where to start. But a village couldn’t function without men. And after word got out, people from neighboring villages and towns no longer dared to marry their daughters into the village.

 

Years of killing female infants had resulted in fewer women in the village to begin with. After such deterioration and development, the village had a group of single, large-breasted adult males. The scene was simply indescribable.

 

This couldn’t continue.

 

The families of the afflicted gritted their teeth and went to the city to consult doctors. The doctors said it might be because the food they consumed had problems, perhaps containing too many female hormones, disrupting male endocrine systems and causing them to become feminized during growth.

 

However, the breasts that had grown couldn’t shrink back by themselves, the changes that had occurred were difficult to reverse, and the treatment methods at that time were quite troublesome. The villagers really couldn’t afford long-term treatment, so it eventually came to nothing.

 

Learning that it was a condition that could be scientifically explained, the villagers were immediately convinced. While terrified, they were also somewhat relieved.

 

Since it was related to food, the villagers could only try to exchange their home-grown sweet potatoes at a discount for grain from other villages.

 

Villages far and near had heard of their reputation and dared not trade with them. The villagers had to carry their goods to more distant places, and after successfully selling them, transport the goods back.

 

Those years were particularly difficult. The grain that was already insufficient to eat was reduced by another twenty to thirty percent, which was literally life-threatening.

 

Several people starved to death in those years, but regrettably, there was no improvement whatsoever.

 

They had no choice but to think that perhaps the food eaten before was still accumulated in their bodies, and they would continue with the idea of persisting for a few more years to see the situation. At this time, a woman who had married far from the village returned home with her child, saying he had also developed this condition.

 

The villagers finally realized that what the doctor said was wrong. It had nothing to do with food; the people of Liu Village themselves were the key.

 

Perhaps the long-term pressure and famine made them lose their rationality, and the people of Liu Village desperately hoped that someone could come to save the village.

 

They chose to believe any explanation without basis or logic and took action accordingly.

 

Soon, a monk appeared in the village claiming to have heard the news. He led the villagers to build the so-called “Evil-Eliminating Buddha” temple and said that everything in the village was caused by the unwillingness of dead female infants, who lingered in the village and possessed the boys, causing the effects.

 

The monk also said that among fierce ghosts, ghost infants were the most terrifying and couldn’t be forcibly expelled, otherwise there would be backlash. Since they were only possessing temporarily and hadn’t killed anyone, violent force couldn’t be used, or it would affect the next generation. Everyone should worship the “Evil-Eliminating Buddha” and use sincerity to slowly ferry them to the afterlife, which was the best choice.

 

He spoke mysteriously but convincingly, and the villagers believed him.

 

In the 1750s, the Mountain God came to the village with Zong Ce and saw this pathological scene.

 

He had originally just been passing through, but he happened to arrive in Liu Village when the village was conducting sacrificial rituals.

 

Late at night, the villagers lit candles, wore masks, and knelt all the way down the mountain path, chanting continuously. What they spoke was Sanskrit sutras translated into dialect phonetic translation.

 

The Mountain God listened for a long time but didn’t understand a single word, not knowing what these people were doing, and no one was willing to explain to him. To explore the truth, he followed the crowd up the mountain.

 

A normal male like him, who was also handsome, was very rare in the village. As soon as he appeared, he attracted the crowd’s attention.

 

The villagers stepped forward, continuing to chant, and gathered around him, surrounding the two in the middle.

 

Late at night with heavy tree shadows and flickering firelight, even Zong Ce felt somewhat afraid.

 

Being focused on by hundreds of ill-intentioned gazes was certainly not comfortable.

 

The Mountain God looked through the crowd and saw the wronged souls floating in the darkness. He then turned his head and glanced at the stone tablet at the entrance.

 

“Evil-Eliminating Buddha?” The Mountain God smiled. “What kind of charlatan is doing such things?”

 

The monk responsible for arranging this matter and collecting incense money came out from inside.

 

The monk was about to speak when the Mountain God waved his hand and broke the stone tablet from the bottom, knocking it to the ground. The villagers were all shocked to see this, and the monk quickly shut up and stepped back.

 

The Mountain God said with a smile. “Such evil Buddhas should not appear in the village anymore. When encountering supernatural events, hiring a trustworthy Taoist priest to take a look would be cheaper than building a temple, right?”

 

The villagers’ discussion grew louder, and they seemed to be all women.

 

They pointed at the Mountain God but dared not approach.

 

The Mountain God waved his hand again, and the stone tablet at the entrance floated into the air, broke through the wooden door, and finally fell into the backyard, burying deeply into the soil. Because it hit stones underneath, it stopped, finally leaving a corner exposed.

 

“I’ll help you,” the Mountain God said, “but you can’t do similar things anymore.”

 

Although the monk was talking nonsense, he was right about one point. The malevolent energy of ghost infants was the most difficult to resolve, and the reason the village’s males had become so feminized was precisely due to the haunting of female infant vengeful spirits.

 

The patriarchal mindset and disregard for life had generated strong resentment in them, causing them to linger and wanting to turn everyone into women.

 

Some ghosts had waited in the underworld for decades, even nearly a century, before completing their sins and getting the chance for reincarnation. Having been born for only a few minutes, not even able to open their eyes to see the world, they were directly sentenced to death. How could such hatred ever be resolved?

 

The Mountain God therefore settled down in Liu Village to help the villagers resolve the resentment in this place.

 

The text ended here and did not continue further.

 

After reading the brief record on the stone tablet, everyone felt somewhat melancholy.

 

“Oh!” the little Mountain God suddenly said, “I know, like Lei Feng, you have to write it down after doing good deeds.”

 

Jiang Feng: “…”

 

The junior brother hesitantly said, “So we need to continue looking for his diary?”

 

(TL: “雷鋒” (Lei Feng) refers to the famous Chinese soldier celebrated for selflessness and good deeds, often used sarcastically/ironically in modern speech when someone shows off their good actions.)